Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Author(s): Eric Foner

Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 74, No. 3, The Constitution and American Life:
A Special Issue (Dec., 1987), pp. 863-883
Published by: Organization of American Historians
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Rights
and
the
Constitution in
Civil
Life
Black
during
the
War
and
Reconstruction

Eric Foner
Earlyin 1873 a northern correspondentin Mississippicommented on the remarkable changes the previous decade had wrought in the behavior and self-image of
southern blacks. "One hardly realizes the fact,"he wrote, "that the many negroes
one sees here . . . have been slaves a few short yearsago, at least as far as their demeanor goes as individuals newly invested with all the rights and privileges of an
Americancitizen. They appreciatetheir new condition thoroughly,and flaunt their
independence." As the writer intimated, the conception of themselves as equal
citizens of the American republic galvanized blacks' political and social activity
during Reconstruction.Recent studies have made clearhow the persistent agitation
of RadicalRepublicansand abolitionists, and the political crisiscreated by the impasse between AndrewJohnson and CongressoverReconstructionpolicy, produced
the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendmentsmeasuresthat embodied a new national commitment to the principle of equality
before the law.'But the conception of citizens' rights enshrined in national law and
the federal Constitution during Reconstructionalso came, as it were, from below.
In seeking to invest emancipation with a broad definition of equal rights, blacks
challenged the nation to live up to the full implications of its democraticcreed and
helped set in motion events that fundamentally altered the definition of citizenship
for all Americans.
The transformationof blacks' role within American society began during the
Civil War.Forthe nearlyfour million slaves,for the tiny, despised blackpopulation
of the free states, and for the free blacks of the South, the war held out the hope
of a radical change in American race relations. Each of those groups took actions
EricFoneris professorof history at Columbia University.This essayderivesin largemeasure from the author'sbook
Reconstruction:America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, a general history of the post-Civil War yearsto be
published in 1988. The authorwishes to thank, for criticismsand suggestions, David Thelen and other participants
in the Conferenceon Rights and Constitutionalism in AmericanLife held at the Universityof Massachusetts,Amherst, in 1986. He is also deeply grateful to Ira Berlin, Leslie Rowland, and their colleagues at the Freedmen and
Southern Society Project at the University of Marylandfor generously making material available to him and in
other ways assisting his research.
' Jewish Times (New York), Feb. 7, 1873; Robert J. Kaczorowski,"To Begin the Nation Anew: Congress,
Citizenship, and Civil Rights after the Civil War,"Amencan Historical Review, 92 (Feb. 1987), 45-68.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

that helped propel a reluctantwhite Americadown the roadnot simply to abolition

but also to a constitutionalrecognitionof the principle of civil and political equality
regardlessof race- a concept utterly unprecedentedin the preceding two and a half
centuries of American history.
It is now widely accepted that the actions of thousands of slaveswho in the first
yearsof the war abandoned their masters and headed for the Union lines helped
undermine the South'speculiarinstitution and acceleratedthe Lincoln administration's progresstowardemancipation. Moredirectlypertinent to the question of the
former slaves'rights as free men and women, however,was the massiveenrollment
of blacksin military service,which began in earnestin 1863. By the war'send some
180,000 blackshad servedin the Union army- overone-fifth of the adult male black
population of the United States below the age of forty-five.The "logicalresult"of
black military service, one senator observed in 1864, was that "the black man is
henceforth to assume a new status among us."Although treated with anything but
equality in accessto promotion and, initially, in pay, black soldiersplayed a crucial
role not simply in winning the CivilWarbut also in defining the war'sconsequences.
Their service helped transform both the nation's treatment of blacks and blacks'
conception of themselves. Forthe first time in American history, large numbers of
blacks were treated as equals before the law- if only before military law. In army
courts blacks could testify against whites (something unheard of throughout the
South and in much of the North as well). It wasin the armythat those formerslaves
first learned to read and write, either from teachersemployed by the military or in
classroomsand literarysocieties established and funded by the soldiersthemselves.
"A large portion of the regiment have been going to school during the winter
months," wrote a black sergeant from Virginia in March 1865. "Surelythis is a
mighty and progressiveage in which we live."2
FromOliverCromwell'sNew Model Armyto the militias raisedduring the American Revolutionto guerrillaarmies of our own day, military servicehas often been
a politicizing and radicalizing experience. For black troops, especially the vast
majority who had known bondage, the army'simpact was particularlyprofound.
"No negro who has ever been a soldier,"wrote one northern official in 1865, "can
again be imposed upon; they have learnt what it is to be free and they will infuse
their feelings into others."Black troops flaunted their contempt for symbols of
slaveryand relished the opportunity to exert authority over southern whites. One
soldier celebrated his ability to walk "fearlesslyand boldly through the streets [of
New Orleans] . . . without being required to take off his cap at every step." For men

of talent and ambition, the armyflung open a door to position and respectability.
2 IraBerlin,Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S.
Rowland,eds., Freedom:A Documentary History of Emancipation,
1861-1867, Series 2: The Black MilitaryExperience(New York, 1982),passim; MaryBerry,MilitaryNecessity and
Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the Constitution, 1861-1868 (Port Washington, 1977), 41-57, 62-74;
HermanBelz, A New Birth ofFreedom: TheRepublicanPartyandFreedmen'sRights, 1861-1866(Westport, 1976),
24; John Blassingame,"The Union Army as an EducationalInstitution for Negroes)"Journalof Negro Education,
34 (Summer 1965), 152-59; Cam Walker,"Corinth:The Story of a Contraband Camp,"Civil WarHistory, 20
(March 1974), 15; ChristianRecorder,March 18, 1865.

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Rights and Black Life in War and Reconstruction

865

NAM

.FVI----

Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Troops, at Fort Lincoln, Washington, D.C.

Courtesy Prints and Photos Division, Libraryof Congress.

From
the army would come many of the black political leaders of Radical Reconstruction,
including at least forty-one delegates to state constitutional conventions,
sixtylegislators,and four congressmen.3
Intime, the black contribution to the Union war effort would fade from the nation's
collectivememory. But it remaineda vital part of the blackcommunity'ssense
if itsown history. "Theysay,"an Alabama planter reported in 1867, "the Yankees
could have whipped the South without the aid of the negroes."Here lay a
&ever
crucialjustification for blacks' self-confident claim to equal citizenship during
a claim anticipated in the soldiers'long battle for equal pay during
Reconstruction,
thewar.At the ArkansasConstitutional Convention of 1868, former slave William
held his silence for weeks in deference to more accomplished white
Murphey
(who, he pointed out, had "tobtainedthe means of education by the black
delegates
man's
sweat").But when some of those delegates questioned blacks' right to the
Murpheyfelt compelled to protest: "Hasnot the man who conquersupon
suffrage,
thefieldof battle, gained any rights? Have we gained none by the sacrificeof our
brethren?"4
Amongnorthern blacks as well, the war inspired hopes for a broad expansion
oftheirrights within American society. The small northern black political leadershipofministers,professionals,fugitive slaves,and membersof abolitionist societies
3GeorgeD. Reynoldsto StuartEldridge,Oct. 5, 1865, RegisteredLettersReceived,ser. 2052, MississippiAssisRecordsof the Bureauof Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, RG 105 (National ArtastCommissioner,
LeonF.Litwack,Been in the Storm So Long: TheAftermath of Slavery(New York,1979), 96-102. Informachives);
tonaboutthe postwarcareersof blacksoldiersis derivedfrom a biographicalfile of blackpolitical leaderscompiled
b EricFoner(in Eric Foner'spossession).
IJohnH. Parrishto Henry Watson,Jr.,June 20, 1867, Henry Watson,Jr., Papers(PerkinsLibrary,Duke Univeriqy,Durham,N.C.); Debates and Proceedingsof the Convention which Assembled at Little Rock,January 7, 1868
.. . (LittleRock, 1868), 629.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

had long searchedfor a means of improvingthe condition of blacksin the free states
and of striking a blow against the peculiar institution. In the antebellum decades,
a majority had embraced what Vincent Harding calls the "Great Tradition" an
affirmationof Americanismthat insisted that blacksformed an integral part of the
nation and were entitled to the same rights and opportunities white citizens enjoyed. In the 1850s, however,many northern blacks had despaired of ever finding
a secure and equal place in American life, and a growing number of black leaders
had come to espouse emigration to the Caribbeanor Africa, reflectingboth an incipient racial nationalism and a pessimism about black prospects in the United
States.Rejectingentirelythe GreatTradition,H. FordDouglass pointedly reminded
one black convention that far from being a "foreign element," an aberrationin
American life, slaveryhad received the sanction of the Founding Fathersand was
"completelyinterwoveninto the passionsand prejudicesof the Americanpeople."5
The Civil War produced an abrupt shift from the pessimism of the 1850s to a
renewed spirit of patriotism, restoringnorthern blacks'faith in the largersociety.
Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, a California black foresaw the
dawning of a new day for his people:
Everything
amongus indicatesa changein ourcondition,and [wemust]prepare
to act in a differentsphere from that in which we have heretoforeacted.... Our
relation to this government is changing daily. . . . Old things are passing away,

and eventuallyold prejudicesmustfollow.The revolutionhas begun, and time

alonemust decidewhereit is to end.
Emancipation further transformed the black response to American nationality.
Symbolic,perhaps, was the fact that MartinR. Delany, the "fatherof black nationalism" and during the 1850s an advocate of emigration, now recruited blacks for
the Union armyand then joined himself. "I am proud to be an Americancitizen,"
declared black abolitionist Robert Purvisin 1863, recalling how, when the federal
governmentwas "a slaveholding oligarchy,"he had denounced the country as "the
basest despotism"on earth. FrederickDouglass, throughout his life the most insistent advocateof the now-reinvigoratedGreatTradition,emerged as blackAmerica's
premier spokesman, welcomed at the White House, his speeches widely reprinted
in the northern press, his own life, he believed, exemplifying how America might
move beyond racism to a society founded on universalhuman rights. Throughout
the warDouglass insisted that the logical and essential corrollariesof emancipation
were the end of all color discrimination,complete equality before the law, and the
enfranchisementof black men-the "full and complete adoption" of blacks "into
the great national family of America."6
Meeting at Syracuse,New York,in October 1864, a national black convention
5 Vincent Harding, ThereIs a River: The Black Strugglefor Freedom in America (New York, 1981), 117-39,
172-94.
6 Harding, ThereIsa River,233-35;James M. McPherson,ed., TheNegro's Civil War(NewYork,1967), 251-52;
Philip S. Foner,ed., The Voiceof Black America (2 vols., New York, 1975), I, 293-94, 318; Philip S. Foner,ed.,
The Life and Writingsof FrederickDouglass (4 vols., New York, 1950-1955), III, 292, 348-52, 396.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

867

reflectedthe optimism rekindled by the Civil War.The convention'sspirit was very

much that of the Great Tradition.Henry Highland Garnet reaffirmedhis belief in
"Negronationality,"but his was a lonely voice, drownedin a sea of support for "acknowledged American ideas." The convention galvanized a black assault on the
northern color line that in the war'sfinal months won some modest but significant
victories. In February1865 the first black lawyer,John S. Rock of Boston, was admitted to the barof the SupremeCourt. (Eight yearsearlier,the Courthad declared,
in the case of Dred Scott, that a black person could not be a citizen of the United
States.) Slowly,the North's racial barriersbegan to fall. In 1863 Californiafirstpermitted blacks to testify in criminal cases; in 1865 Illinois repealed its law barring
blacksfrom entering the state, Ohio eliminated the last of its discriminatory"black
laws,"and Massachusettspassedthe firstcomprehensivepublic accommodationslaw
in Americanhistory.During the warNew YorkCity, San Francisco,Cincinnati, and
Cleveland desegregated their streetcars.7
Under pressure of emancipation, black military service, and the activity of
northern blacksand their white allies, racialprejudice bent but did not break. No
northern state outside of New England allowed blacksto vote on equal terms with
whites. Yet by the war'send, the issue of black suffrageoccupied center stage in
Americanpolitics. The sudden prominence of the black suffrageissue was a direct
resultof the political mobilization of the free blacksof New Orleans,who compelled
Congressand the president to grapple with the question as reconstructedLouisiana
sought readmission to the Union.
In New Orleanslived the largestfree blackcommunity of the Deep South, whose
members'wealth, social standing, education, and unique historyset them apartnot
only from slaves but also from most other free persons of color. Descendants of
unions between Frenchsettlers and black women or of wealthy mulatto emigrants
from revolutionaryHaiti, many of the city'sfree blacksspoke only Frenchand educated their children at privateacademiesin New Orleansor Paris.Although denied
the suffrage,they possessed far more rights than their counterpartsin other states
and owned some two million dollarsworth of propertyon the eve of the war.That
self-consciouscommunity,with a strong sense of its collectivehistory and a network
of privatelysupported schools, orphanages,and benevolent societies, waswell positioned to advanceits own interests once Union troops occupied the CrescentCity.
At firstfree blacksspoke only for themselves,for as one who came to know the community well later recounted:
Theytendedto separatetheirstrugglefromthat of the Negroes;some believed
that theywouldachievetheircausemorequicklyif theyabandonedthe blackto
7 Proceedingsof the National Convention of ColoredMen Held in the City of Syracuse,N.Y (Boston, 1864),
4-6, 19, 53-56; Harding, ThereIs a River, 246-49; George A. Levesque, "Boston'sBlack Brahmin: Dr. John S.
Rock,' Civil WarHistory, 26 (Dec. 1980), 336; RobertJ. Chandler, "Friendsin Time of Need: Republicansand
Black Civil Rights in Californiaduring the Civil War Era,"Arizona and the West, 11 (Winter 1982), 329; Roger
D. Bridges, "EqualityDeferred:Civil Rights for Illinois Blacks, 1865-1885,"Journal of the Illinois State Historical
Society, 74 (Spring 1981),82-87; ChristianRecorder,Nov. 19, 1864; Milton R. Konvitz, A Centuryof Civil Rights
(New York, 1961), 155-56.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

his fate.In theireyes,theywerenearerto the whiteman;theyweremoreadvanced

than the slave in all respects....

A strange errorin a society in which prejudice

weighedequallyagainstall thosewhohad Africanbloodin theirveins,no matter

how smallthe amount.8
By January 1864 Lincoln appearsto have privately endorsed the enrollment of
freeborn blacks as voters in Louisiana.But Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, to whom he
had entrusted Louisiana'swartime Reconstruction, viewed even a limited black
suffrageas a threatto his effortsto win white supportfor a constitutionalconvention
that would abolish slaveryin the state. In March1864 two representativesof the free
black community, Arnold Bertonneau, a wealthy wine dealer, and Jean Baptiste
Roudanez, a plantation engineer, arrivedin Washington,D.C., to present a petition
for the suffrage.The day after their meeting, Lincoln wrote Gov. MichaelHahn of
Louisianaconcerningthe coming convention:"I barelysuggest for yourprivateconsideration, whether some of the colored people not be let in -as for instance, the
very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks....
But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone."9
Hardlya ringing endorsement of black suffrage,Lincoln'sletter nonetheless represented his first quasi-officialstatement on black voting. Moreover,it proposed to
expandthe suffrageconsiderablybeyondthe freebornpopulation for whom Bertonneau and Roudanezspoke. The letter illustratedthe flexibility and capacityto compromise that were the hallmarksof Lincoln'spolitical leadership. Such qualities,
however,werein short supply in wartimeLouisiana,for when the constitutionalconvention met, it abolished slaverybut made no gesture toward black voting rights.
Indeed, reported one observer,"prejudiceagainst the colored people is exhibited
continually,prejudice bitter and vulgar."Some delegates demanded the expulsion
of all blacksfrom the state- even though, as one member pointed out, blacktroops
were at that very moment guarding the convention hall. The convention widened
a preexistingdivision in Unionist ranks,and it propelled the free black community
down the road to universalmanhood suffrage.10
The voice of Louisiana'spolitically articulate free blacks was the New Orleans
Tribune, a newspaper founded by Dr. Louis C. Roudanez, the wealthy son of a
Frenchmerchantand a free woman of color, and edited byJean-CharlesHouzeau,

8 LauraFoner,"TheFreePeople of Colorin Louisianaand St. Domingue' Journal of SocialHistory, 3 (Summer

1970), 406-30; TedTunnell, "FreeNegroes and the Freedmen:BlackPoliticsin New Orleansduring the Civil War,"
Southern Studies, 19 (Spring 1980), 6-7; Donald E. Everett,"Demands of the New OrleansFree Colored Population for PoliticalEquality, 1862-1865 ' LouisianaHistorical Quarterly,38 (April 1955), 43-49; Jean-CharlesHouzeau, MyPassageat the New Orleans"Tribune":A Memoirof the Civil WarEra,ed. David C. Rankin,trans.Gerald
F. Denault (Baton Rouge, 1984), 81.
9 FredH. Harrington,Fighting Politician:MajorGeneralN. P Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 143-46; LaWanda
Cox, Lincoln andBlack Freedom:A Study in PresidentialLeadership(Columbia, 1981), 79-95; Houzeau, My Passage at the New Orleans "Tribune,"25n34; Roy P. Basler,ed., The Collected Worksof Abraham Lincoln (9 vols.,
New Brunswick, 1953), VII, 243.
10 "Diary and Correspondenceof Salmon P. Chase,"Annual Report of the American Historical Association,
1902, p. 438; Debates in the Conventionfor the Revision and Amendment of the Constitution of the State of
Louisiana (New Orleans, 1864), 155, 213-14, 394, 556; Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom, 97-99.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

869

a Belgian aristocratwho had been convertedto the revolutionaryideas of 1848 and

had emigrated to the United Statesin the 1850s. In Houzeau, the Tribune'sproprietors found a man whose political outlook, like their own, had been shaped by the
heritage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In Roudanez and the
others associated with the newspaper,Houzeau recognized "the vanguard of the
African population of the United States." In late 1864 the Tribune made the
momentous decision to demand suffragefor the freedmen, the free blacks' "dormant partners."It went on to develop a coherent radical program embracing the
vote, equality before the law, the desegregationof Louisiana'sschools, the opening
of New Orleansstreetcarsto blacks, and the division of plantation lands among the
freedmen. Forthe moment, however,black suffrageremained the Louisianamovement's central demand. Within the state, it did not receive a hearing. But in
Washington the movement's complaints against the Louisianagovernmentfound
a sympathetic audience. Contact with the cultured, economically successfulNew
Orleans group challenged the racist assumptions widespread even in Republican
circlesand doubtless influenced Lincoln'sown evolution towarda more egalitarian
approachto Reconstruction.Becauseof Louisiana,blacksuffragebecame a live issue
in the Congressthat assembled in December 1864, torpedoing efforts to forge an
agreement between Lincoln and Congress on a plan of Reconstruction and
preventing the seating of Louisiana'snewly elected senators.1"
Despite the Louisianaimpasse, the second session of the Thirty-eighth Congress
was indeed a historic occasion, for in January Congressgave final approvalto the
Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slaverythroughout the Union. "Theone question of the age is settled," exulted CongressmanCornelius Cole of California. But
the amendment closed one question only to open a host of others. Did emancipation imply any additional rights for the former slaves?"What is freedom?"James
A. Garfieldwould soon ask. "Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? . . . If
this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery,a cruel delusion."Rather than being
a predeterminedcategoryor static concept, however,"freedom"itself became a terrain of conflict in the aftermath of emancipation, its substance open to different
and sometimes contradictoryinterpretations,its content changing for both blacks
and whites in the yearsfollowing the Civil War. And as the former slaves entered
the nation's public life after the war, they sought to breathe life into the promise
of freedom.12
"The Negroes are to be pitied," wrote a South Carolinaeducator and minister.
"Theydo not understandthe liberty which has been conferredupon them."In fact,
blackscarriedout of bondage an understandingof their new condition shaped both
by their experience as slaves and by observationof the free society around them.
11 Houzeau, My Passageat the New Orleans "Tribune,"
2-5, 19-39, 75, 78-80, 96-97; New Orleans Tribune,
Aug. 4, Aug. 11, Aug. 13, Sept. 10, Sept. 24, Dec. 29, 1864,Jan. 10-15, 1865; Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom,
103-27; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction
1863-1869 (New York, 1974), 84-97.
12 Cornelius Cole, Memoirs of Cornelius Cole (New York, 1908), 220; Burke A. Hinsdale, ed., The Worksof
James Abram Garfield (2 vols., Boston, 1882-1883), I, 86.

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What one planter called their "wild notions of right and freedom" encompassed
firstof all an end to the myriadinjusticesassociatedwith slavery- separationof families, punishment by the lash, denial of accessto education. To some, like Georgia
black leader Rev. Henry M. Turner,freedom meant the enjoyment of "ourrights
in common with other men." "If I cannot do like a white man I am not free,"Henry
Adams told his formermasterin 1865. "Isee how the poor white people do. I ought
to do so too, or else I am a slave."'13
Underpinning blacks'individual aspirationslay a broadertheme: their quest for
independence from white control, for autonomy both as individuals and as
members of a community itself being transformedas a result of emancipation. In
countless ways, blacksin 1865 sought to "throwoff the badge of servitude,"to overturn the real and symbolic authoritywhites had exercisedover everyaspect of their
lives. Some took new names that reflected the lofty hopes inspired by
emancipation-Deliverance Belin, Hope Mitchell, Chance Great. Others relished
opportunities to flaunt their liberationfrom the infinite regulations,significantand
trivial, associatedwith slavery.Freedmenheld mass meetings unrestrainedby white
surveillance; they acquired dogs, guns, and liquor (all forbidden them under
slavery);and they refused to yield the sidewalk to whites. Blacks dressed as they
pleased and left plantations when they desired. They withdrewfrom churchescontrolled by whites and created autonomous churches, stabilized and strengthened
the families they had brought out of slavery,and established a networkof independent schools and benevolent societies.14
In no other realm of southern life did blacks'effort to define the terms of their
own freedom or to identify the "rights"arising from emancipation with independence from white control have implications so explosivefor the entire society as in
the economy.Blacksbroughtout of slaverya conception of themselvesas a "Working
Class of People,"in the words of a group of Georgia freedmen who had been unjustly deprivedof the fruitsof their labor.InJanuary1865 Gen. William T. Sherman
and Secretaryof War Edwin M. Stanton met with a group of black leaders in
Savannah, Georgia, recently occupied by the Union army.Asked what he understood by slavery,Baptist minister Garrison Frazierresponded that it meant one
man's "receiving. .. the work of another man, and not by his consent."Freedom
he defined as "placingus where we could reap the fruit of our own labor."Yet more
than simply receiving wages, blacks demanded the right to control the conditions

13 John H. Moore, ed., TheJuhl Letters to the "CharlestonCourier"(Athens, 1974), 20; Will Martin to Benjamin G. Humphreys,Dec. 5, 1865, MississippiGovernor'sPapers(MississippiDepartment of Archivesand History,
Jackson);Nathaniel P. Banks,EmancipatedLaborinLouisiana(n.p., 1864), 7;Joseph P. Reidy,"Mastersand Slaves,
Planters and Freedmen: The Transitionfrom Slavery to Freedom in Central Georgia, 1820-1880" (Ph.D. diss.,
Northern Illinois University, 1982), 162; U.S. Congress, Senate, Report and Testimonyof the Select Committee
of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States
to the Northern States, 46 Cong., 2 sess., Senate rept. 693, pt. 2, p. 191.
14 Eliza F. Andrews, The War-Time
Journal of a Georgia Girl (New York, 1908), 347; George C. Rogers,Jr.,
The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina(Columbia, 1970), 439-41; Litwack,Been in the Storm So
Long, passim.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

871

under which they worked,to free themselvesfrom subordinationto white authority,

and to carve out the greatest possible measure of economic autonomy.15
The desire to escape from white supervisionand to establish a modicum of economic independence profoundly shaped blacks' economic choices during Reconstruction.It led them to resistworkingin gangs under overseersand to preferleasing
land for a fixed rent to workingfor wages. Above all, it inspired their quest for land
of their own. Without land, there could be no economic autonomy,blacksbelieved,
for their labor would continue to be subject to exploitation by their formerowners.
"Gib us our own land and we take careourselves,"a Charlestonblacktold northern
correspondentWhitelaw Reid, "but widout land, de ole massas can hire or starve
us, as dey please."'16
Numerous freedmen emergedfrom slaveryconvincedthey had a "right"to a portion of their formerowners'land. In part, their belief stemmed from actions of the
federal government-the Freedmen'sBureauAct of early 1865, which held out the
prospectof the division of confiscatedand abandoned land among blacksand white
refugees, and General Sherman'sField Order 15, which set aside a portion of the
South Carolinaand GeorgiaLowcountryfor exclusivesettlement by blacks.In addition, blacksinsisted it was only fair that "the land ought to belong to the man who
(alone) could work it," as one former slave told rice planter EdwardB. Heyward.
Most often, however,blacks insisted their past labor entitled them to a portion of
their owners'estates. "Theyhave an idea that they have a certain right to the property of their former masters, that they have earned it," reported a North Carolina
Freedmen'sBureauofficial. In its most sophisticatedform, the claim to land rested
on an appreciation of the role of black labor in the evolution of the nation's
economy. When the army evicted blacks it had earlier settled on land near Yorktown, Virginia, freedman Bayley Wyat gave an impromptu speech of protest:
We has a rightto the landwherewe arelocated.Forwhy?I tell you. Ourwives,
our children,our husbands,has been sold overand overagainto purchasethe
landswe now locatedupon;for that reasonwe havea divinerightto the land.
... And den didn'twe clearethe land, and raisede cropsob corn,ob cotton,
ob tobacco,ob rice,ob sugar,ob everything.And den didn'tdem largecitiesin
de North growup on de cottonand de sugarsand de ricedat we made?. . . I
say dey has grownrich,and my people is poor.'7
If the goal of autonomy inspired blacksto withdrawfrom religious and other institutions controlledby whites and to attempt to workout their own economic desti-

15 EdwardMagdol,
A Right to the Land: Essayson the Freedmen'sCommunity (Westport, 1977), 273; "Colloquy with Colored Ministers,"Journal of Negro History, 16 (Jan. 1931), 88-94, esp. 91.
16 CharlesColcockJones, Jr., to EvaJones, Nov. 7, 1865, CharlesColcockJones, Jr., Collection (Universityof
GeorgiaLibrary,Athens); Southern Cultivator,March1867, p. 69; Whitelaw Reid, After the War:A Southern Tour
(Cincinnati, 1866), 59.
17 Reid, After the War,335; U.S. Congress, Senate, Reportsof Assistant Commissionersof the Freedmen'sBureau, 1865-66, 39 Cong., 1 sess., Senate exec. doc. 27, p. 84; EdwardB. Heywardto Katherine Heyward,May 5,
1867, HeywardFamilyPapers(South CarolinianaLibrary,Universityof South Carolina,Columbia); A Freedman's
Speech (Philadelphia, 1867).

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nies, in the polity freedom implied inclusion rather than separation. Indeed, the
attempt to win recognition of their equal rights as citizens quickly emerged as the
animating impulse of blackpolitics during Reconstruction.Achieving a measureof
political powerseemed indispensable to attaining the other goals of the blackcommunity, including accessto the South'seconomic resources,equal treatment in the
courts, and protection against violence. But apart from its specific uses, in the
United States the ballot was itself an emblem of citizenship. In a professedly
democraticpolitical culture, the ballot did more than identify who could vote -it
defined a collectivepublic life, as woman suffrageadvocatesso tirelesslypointed out.
(For most postwar Americans, to be sure, "black suffrage" meant black male
suffrage.Fewblackmen arguedthat women should exercisepolitical rights;yet most
black women seem to have agreed that the enfranchisementof black men would
represent a major step forwardfor the entire black community.) Democrats were
repelled by the very idea of including blacksin the common public life defined by
the suffrage. "Without reference to the question of equality,"declared Senator
Thomas Hendricksof Indiana, "Isaywe are not of the same race;we are so different
that we ought not to compose one political community."The United States,
FrederickDouglass reminded the nation, differed profoundly from societies accustomed to fixed social classesand historicallydefined gradationsof civil and political rights:
If I werein a monarchialgovernment,... wherethe fewboreruleandthe many
weresubject,therewouldbe no specialstigmarestinguponme, becauseI did not
exercisethe elective franchise....

But here, where universalsuffrageis the fun-

damentalidea of the Government,to ruleus out is to makeus an exception,to

brand us with the stigma of inferiorityJ8

The statewide conventions held throughout the South during 1865 and early
1866 offered evidence of the early spread of political mobilization among the
South's freedmen. Several hundred delegates attended the gatherings, some
selected by local meetings specially convened for the purpose, others by churches,
fraternal societies, and black army units, still others simply self-appointed. Although the delegates "rangedall colors and apparentlyall conditions,"urban free
mulattoes took the most prominent roles, whereasformerslaves,although in attendance, were almost entirely absent from positions of leadership. Numerous black
soldiers, ministers, and artisansalso took part, as well as a significant number of
recent black arrivalsfrom the North.19
The conventions'major preoccupationsproved to be the suffrage and equality
before the law. In justifying the demand for the vote, the delegates invokedthe na18
CongressionalGlobe, 39 Cong., 1 sess., Feb. 16, 1866, p. 880; Foner, ed., Life and Writingsof Frederick
Douglass, IV, 159.
19John R. Dennett, The South As It Is: 1865-1866, ed. Henry M. Christman(New York, 1965), 148-50; Reid,
After the War,81; Nashville Colored Tennessean,Aug. 12, 1865;J. W. Blackwell to AndrewJohnson, Nov. 24,
1865, AndrewJohnson Papers(ManuscriptsDivision, Libraryof Congress);Peter Kolchin, FirstFreedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction(Westport, 1972), 152-53.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

873

tion's republican traditions, especially the Declaration of Independence, "the

broadest, the deepest, the most comprehensiveand truthful definition of human
freedom that was evergiven to the world,"as blackFreedmen'sBureauofficialJohn
M. Langstonput it. "The colored people,"Rev.James Hood would declarein 1868,
"had read the Declaration until it had become part of their natures."The North
Carolinaconvention he chairedin 1865 portrayedthe Civil Warand emancipation
as chaptersin the onwardmarchof "progressivecivilization,"embodiments of "the
fundamental truths laid down in the great charterof Republicanliberty, the Declaration of Independence."Such language was not confined to convention delegates.
ElevenAlabama blackscomplaining in 1865 of contractfrauds, injustice before the
courts, and other abuses concluded their petition with a revealingmasterpiece of
understatement: "this is not the persuit of happiness."20
There was more to the invocation of the Declaration of Independence than
merely familiar wording. Like northern blacks steeped in the Great Traditionof
prewarprotest, the freedmen and southern free blacks saw emancipation as enabling the nation to live up to the full implications of its republicancreed-a goal
that could only be achieved by leaving behind the legacy of racialproscriptionand
by absorbingblacksfully into the civil and political order.IshamSweat,a slave-born
barberwho wrote the addressissued by North Carolina'sconvention and went on
to sit in the state legislature,told northernjournalistJohnR. Dennett that Congress
should "declarethat no state had a republicanform of governmentif everyfree man
in it was not equal before the law."Another 1865 speakerdestined for Reconstruction prominence, Louisiana'sOscarJ. Dunn, describedthe absence of "discrimination among men,"of "privilegesfounded upon birth-right,"and of "hereditarydistinctions"as the essence of America'spolitical heritage. Continued proscriptionof
blacks, Dunn warned, would jeopardize the republic'svery future, opening "the
door for the institution of aristocracy,nobility, and even monarchy."21
Like their northern counterparts during the Civil War, southern blacks now
proclaimed their identification with the nation's history, destiny, and political
system. The very abundance of letters and petitions addressedby black gatherings
and ordinaryfreedmen to officials of the army,to the Freedmen'sBureau, and to
state and federal authorities, revealeda belief that the political order was at least
partiallyopen to black influence. "Weare Americans,"declared an addressfrom a
Norfolk blackmeeting, "weknow no other country,we love the land of our birth."
It went on to remind white Virginiansthat in 1619"ourfathersas well as yourswere
toiling in the plantations on James River"and that a black man, CrispusAttucks,
shed "the first blood" in the American Revolution. And, of course, blacks had
20John M. Langston,Freedomand Citizenship (Washington, 1883), 99-100, 110;LeonardBernstein, "TheParticipation of Negro Delegates in the ConstitutionalConventionof 1868 in North Carolina"Journalof Negro History, 34 (Oct. 1949), 404; Convention of the Freedmen of North Carolina(Raleigh, 1865), 6; Prince Murrelland
ten othersto Gen. WagerSwayne,Dec. 17, 1865, UnregisteredLettersReceived,ser. 9, AlabamaAssistantCommissioner, Recordsof the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
21 Peter D. Klingman,Josiah Wazlls
(Gainesville, 1976), 72-73; Dennett, South As It Is, 176; Sidney Andrews,
(Boston, 1866), 125; Proceedings of the Republican Party of Louisiana (New Orleans,
The South since the W4rr
1865), 4-5.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

fought and died to save the Union. America, resolved another Virginia meeting,
was "nowour country-made emphaticallyso by the blood of our brethren"in the
Union army.22
Despite the insistent language of individual speeches, the conventions'resolutions and public addressesgenerally adopted a moderate tone, revealing both a
realisticassessmentof the political situation during PresidentialReconstructionand
the fact that political mobilization had proceeded more quickly in southern cities
than in the Black Belt where most freedmen lived. Similarly,economic concerns
figured only marginally in the proceedings. The ferment rippling through the
southern countrysidefound little echo at the state conventions of 1865 and 1866,
a reflectionof the paucity of Black Belt representation.Fardifferentwas the situation in 1867 when, in the aftermath of the ReconstructionAct, a wave of political
mobilization swept the rural South.23
Likeemancipation, the adventof blacksuffrageinspiredfreedmen with a millennial sense of living at the dawn of a new era. Formerslavesnow stood on an equal
footing with whites, a blackspeakertold a Savannahmassmeeting, and beforethem
lay "afield, too vast for contemplation."As in 1865 blacksfound countless waysof
pursuing aspirationsfor autonomy and equality and of seizing the opportunity to
press for further change. Strikesbroke out during the spring of 1867 among black
longshoremen in the South'smajorport cities and quickly spreadto other workers,
including Richmond, Virginia, coopers and Selma, Alabama, restaurantworkers.
Hundredsof South Carolinablacksrefusedto pay taxes to the existing state government, and there was an unsuccessfulattempt to rescuechain gang prisonersat work
on Mobile, Alabama'sstreets.Three blacksrefusedto leave a whites-onlyRichmond
streetcar,and crowdsflocked to the scene shouting, "let'shave our rights."In New
Orleans, groups commandeeredsegregatedhorse-drawnstreetcarsand drovethem
around the city in triumph. By midsummer, integrated transportationhad come
to these and other cities.24
But in 1867 politics emerged as the principalfocus of blackaspirations.Itinerant
lecturers,blackand white, brought the messageof equality to the heart of the rural
South. In MonroeCounty,Alabama, whereno blackpolitical meeting had occurred
before, freedmen crowdedaround the speakershouting "God bless you, bless God
22 Equal Suffrage:Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of
the United States
(New Bedford, 1865), 1, 8; Joseph R. Johnson to 0. 0. Howard,Aug. 4, 1865, UnregisteredLettersReceived,ser.
457, Districtof Columbia AssistantCommissioner,Recordsof the Bureauof Refugees,Freedmen,and Abandoned
Lands.
23 RobertaSue Alexander,North CarolinaFacesthe Freedmen:RaceRelationsduring PresidentialReconstruction, 1865-67 (Durham, 1985), 28; Philip S. Fonerand George E. Walker,eds., Proceedingsof the Black National
and State Conventions, 1865-1900 (Philadelphia, 1986-), I, 189-94; Proceedings of the Freedmen'sConvention
of Georgia (Augusta, 1866), 20, 30.
24 SavannahDaily News and Herald, March 19, 1867; Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis, eds., The Black
Worker:A DocumentaryHistoryfrom Colonial Timesto the Present(8 vols., Philadelphia, 1978-1984), I, 352-53;
PeterJ. Rachleff,BlackLaborin the South: Richmond, Virginia,1865-1890 (Philadelphia, 1984), 42-43; Thomas
H. Wade to James L. Orr, April 16, 1867, South CarolinaGovernor'sPapers(South CarolinaDepartment of Archives, Columbia); Mobile Daily Advertiserand Register,April 2, 1867;RogerA. Fischer,"APioneer Protest:The
New Orleans Street-CarControversyof 1867,"Journal of Negro History, 53 (July 1968), 219-33.

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Rights and Black Life in War and Reconstruction

875

Aids.
_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~---------t.:
------.

*W452

&

"Electioneeringat the South." Political meetings

often involved the entire community.
Reproducedfrom Harper's Weekly,July 25, 1868.

forthis."Richmond'stobacco factorieswere forced to close on August 1 because so

manyblack laborers quit work to attend the Republican state convention. Black
churches,
schools, and, indeed, everyother institution of the black community becamehighly politicized. EveryAfricanMethodistEpiscopalminister in Georgiawas
saidto be engaged in Republicanorganizing, and political materialswereread aloud
at"churches,societies, leagues, clubs, balls, picnics, and all other gatherings."One
plantation
managersummed up the situation: "Youneversawa people more excited
onthe subject of politics than are the negroes of the South. They are perfectly
InUnion Leagues,Republicangatherings, and impromptu local meetings, ordiblacksin 1867 and 1868 stakedtheir claim to equal citizenship in the American
nary
republic.A black organizer in Georgia voiced the prevailing sentiment: "He was
noniggernow. He was a citizen and was going to have all the rights of the white
man,and would take no less "26
Attheirmost utopian, blacksnow envisioneda society purged of all racialdistinctions.Thatdoes not mean they lackeda sense of racialidentity, for blacksremained
25 SamuelS. Gardner to 0. D. Kinsman, July 23, 1867, Wager SwaynePapers (Alabama State Department
ofArchives
and History, Montgomery);Magdol, Rightto the Land,42; Henry M. Turnerto Thomas L. TuIIock,
July, July 23, 1867, copies, Robert C. Schenck Papers(RutherfordB. Hayes Library,Fremont, Ohio); Parrishto
WatsonAug. 6, 1867, Watson Papers.
26 Reidy,"Mastersand Slaves, Planters and
Freedmen:' 253.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

proud of the accomplishmentsof blacksoldiersand preferredblackteachersfor their

children and black churchesin which to worship.But in the polity, those who had
so long been proscribedbecause of color, defined equality as color-blind. "I heard
a white man say,"black teacher Robert G. Fitzgeraldrecordedin his diary, "today
is the black man's day; tommorrowwill be the white man's. I thought, poor man,
those days of distinction between colors is about over, in this (now) free country."
Indeed, black politicians sometimes found black listeners unreceptiveto the rhetoric of racialself-consciousness.In South Carolina,MartinR. Delany found it "dangerous to go into the country and speak of color in any manner whatever,without
the angry rejoinder, 'we don't want to hear that; we are all one color now."27
Nor did blacks evince much interest in emigration during Radical Reconstruction. Over twelve hundred emigrantsfrom Georgia and South Carolinahad sailed
for Liberiaunder American Colonization Society auspices during 1866 and 1867,
"tired of the unprovokedscorn and prejudice we daily and hourly suffer."But the
optimism kindled in 1867 brought the emigration movement to an abrupt halt.
"Youcould not get one of them to think of going to Liberianow" wrote a white
colonizationist. Blacksprobably considered themselves more fully American then
than at anytime in the nineteenth century;some even echoed the exuberantnationalism and Manifest Destiny expansionism of what one called "our civilization."
Throughout Reconstruction,blackstook pride in parading on July 4, "the day,"a
Charleston, South Carolina, diarist observed, "the Niggers now celebrate, and the
whites stayhome."As late as 1876, a speakerat a blackconventionaroused"positive
signs of disapproval"by mentioning emigration. "Damn Africa,"one delegate
declared. "If Smith wants to go let him; we'll stay in America."28
Blacks'secularclaim to equality was, in part, underpinned by a religious messianism deeply rooted in the black experience.As slaves, blackshad come to think
of themselves as analogous to the Jews in Egypt, an oppressedpeople whom God,
in the fullness of time, would deliver from bondage. And they endowed the Civil
Warand emancipationwith spiritualimport, comprehendingthose eventsthrough
the language of Christianfaith. A Tennesseenewspapercommented in 1869 that
freedmen habitually referredto slaveryas "Paul'sTime" and to Reconstructionas
"Isaiah'sTime" referringperhapsto Paul'smessageof obedience and humility and
to Isaiah'sprophecyof cataclysmicchange, a "newheaven and a new earth"brought
about by violence. Blackreligion reinforcedblackrepublicanism,for as Rev.J. M. P.
Williams, a Mississippilegislator, put it in 1871, "of one blood God did make all

27 Robert G. FitzgeraldDiary, April 22, 1868, Robert G. Fitzgerald Papers(Schomburg Center for Research
in Black Culture, New York);New National Era, Aug. 31, 1871.
28 FrancisB. Simkins, "TheProblemsof South CarolinaAgricultureafterthe Civil War, North CarolinaHistoricalReview, 7 (Jan. 1930), 54-5 5; WyattMooreto William Coppinger,July 5, 1866, AmericanColonization Society
Papers(ManuscriptsDivision, Libraryof Congress);E. M. Pendleton to Coppinger, March18, 1867, ibid.; P. Sterling Stuckey,"The Spell of Africa:The Development of BlackNationalist Theory, 1829-1945"(Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1973), 91-92; Proceedings of the Southern States Convention of Colored Men, Held in
Columbia, South Carolina(Columbia, 1871),99-100;Jacob SchirmerDiaryJuly 4, 1867,July 4, 1872 (South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston); Cincinnati Commercial, April 10, 1876.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

877

men to dwell upon the face of the earth . . . hence their common origin, destiny

and equal rights."Evennonclericsused secularand religiousvocabularyinterchangably, as in one 1867 speech recorded by a North Carolinajustice of the peace:
He said it was not now like it used to be, that . . . the negro was about to get
his equal rights.... That the negroes owed their freedom to the courage of the
negro soldiers and to God. . . . He made frequent referencesto the II and IV

of the principlesand destinyof the

chaptersofJoshuafor a full accomplishment
race.It wasconcludedthatthe racehavea destinyin viewsimilarto the Children
of Israel.29
Politicsin 1867, unlike two yearsearlier,also assimilatedthe freedmen'seconomic
longings. Many northern and southern freeborn leaders, it is true, clung to free
labor nostrums that portrayedhard work and individual accumulationas the only
legitimate route to the acquisitionof property.It was, however,an inopportune moment to preach self-help to Black Belt freedmen, for successivecrop failures had
left those on sharecontractswith little or no income and had produceda precipitous
decline in cash wages. "Wehave tried [plantation labor] three years,"wrote an Alabama black, "and are worse off than when we started.

. .

. We cannot accumulate

enough to get a home." Drawing on widespread dissatisfactionwith a contract

system that appeared to consign them permanentlyto poverty,ruralblacksraised,
once again, the demand for land.30
The land issue animated grass-rootsblack politics in 1867. The Reconstruction
Act rekindled the belief that the federalgovernmentintended to providefreedmen
with homesteads. In Alabama freedmen delivered "inflammatory"speeches asserting that "all the wealth of the white man has been made by negro labor, and
that the negroeswereentitled to their fairshareof all these accumulations.""Didn't
you clear the white folks' land," asked one orator. "Yes,"voices answeredfrom the
crowd, "and we have a right to it!" There seemed a great deal more danger, wrote
former South CarolinagovernorBenjamin F. Perry,"of 'Cuffee'than Thad Stevens
taking over lands."'31
By mid-1867, planter William Henry Trescotobserved, blackshad become convinced that membershipin the Union League"willin some way,they do not exactly
29 ClarenceG. Walker,A Rockin a Weary
Land. TheAfricanMethodist Episcopal Churchduring the Civil War
andReconstruction(Baton Rouge, 1982), 125;Stephen V. Ash, A House Dividing: War,Emancipation,and Society
in Middle Tennessee,1860-1870 (Baton Rouge, 1987), ch. 9; Address to the Citizens of Adams County, by Rev.
J. M. P Williams, broadside,March1871, Ames FamilyPapers(Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.);A. R. Black and John A. Corbett, report of a speech by EdwardJones, Aug. 22, 1867, Letters
Received, Oaths of Office, and RecordsRelating to Registrationand Elections, 1865-1869, ser. 1380, Port of Wilmington, Recordsof the United States Army Continential Commands, 1821-1920,RG 393, pt. 4 (National Archives).
30 ChristianRecorder,Jan. 7, Aug. 5, Sept. 9, Sept. 16, 1865; Mobile Nationalist, Oct. 24, 1867.
31 Manuel Gottlieb, "The Land Question in Georgia during Reconstruction,"
Science and Society, 3 (Summer
1939), 373-77; U.S. Congress,House of Representatives,TestimonyTakenby the Joint Committee to Enquireinto
the Condition ofAffairs in the Late InsurrectionaryStates, 42 Cong., 2 sess., House rept. 22, Alabama, 976;James
S. Allen, Reconstruction:The Battle for Democracy (New York, 1937), 124; Benjamin F. Perryto F. MarionNye,
May 25, 1867, letterbook, Benjamin F. PerryPapers(Southern HistoricalCollection, Universityof North Carolina,
Chapel Hill).

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

know how, secure them the possession of the land." Yet that was only one among
the multiplicity of purposes blackssought to achievethrough Reconstructionpolitics. In a society markedby vast economic disparitiesand by a growingracialseparation in social and religious life, the polity became the only area where black and
white encounteredeach other on a basis of equality-sitting alongside one another
on juries, in legislatures, and at political conventions;voting together on election
day. Forindividuals, politics offered a rareopportunity for respectable,financially
rewardingemployment. And although elective office and the vote remained male
preserves,black women sharedin the political mobilization. They took part in rallies, parades,and massmeetings, voted on resolutions(to the consternationof some
male participants), and formed their own auxiliaries to aid in electioneering.
During the 1868 campaign, Yazoo, Mississippi,whites found their homes invaded
by buttons depicting Gen. UlyssesS. Grant that were defiantlyworn by blackmaids
and cooks. There were also reports of women ostracizing black Democrats (one
threatenedto "burnhis damned arseoff") and refusingconjugalrelationswith husbands who abandoned the Republican party.32
ThroughoutReconstruction,blacksremained "irrepressibledemocrats.""Negroes
all crazy on politics again,"noted a Mississippiplantation manager in the fall of
1873. "Everytenth negro a candidate for office."And the Republican party-the
party of emancipation and black suffrage-became as central an institution of the
black community as the church and the school. When not deterred by violence,
blacks eagerly attended political gatherings and voted in extraordinarynumbers;
their turnout in many elections exceeded 90 percent. Despite the failureof land distribution, the end of Reconstructionwould come not because propertylessblacks
succumbed to economic coercion but because a politically tenacious blackcommunity fell victim to violence, fraud, and national abandonment. Long after they had
been stripped of the franchise, blacks would recall the act of voting as a defiance
of inherited norms of white superiorityand would regard "the loss of suffrage as
being the loss of freedom."33
The precise uses to which blacks put the political power they achieved during
RadicalReconstructionlie beyond the scope of this essay.But it is clear that with
wealth, political experience,and tradition all mobilized against them in the South,
blackssaw in political authoritya countervailingpower. "Theylook to legislation,"
commented an Alabama newspaper,"becausein the verynature of things, they can
look nowhere else." Although political realities (especially the opposition of
32 "Letterof William Henry Trescoton Reconstructionin South Carolina, 1867,"American HistoricalReview,
15 (April 1910),575-76; RichmondDispatch, Aug. 2, 1867;A. T. Morgan,Yazoo:Or,on the PicketLineofFreedom
in the South (Washington, 1884), 231-33, 293; TestimonyTakenby thejoint Committee to Enquireinto the Condition of Affairsin the Late InsurrectionaryStates, Alabama, 684; ibid., Georgia, 1184;Savannah Colored Tribune",
July 1, 1876.
33 [Belton O'Neall Townsend],"The Political Condition of South Carolina,"Atlantic Monthly, 39 (Feb. 1877),
192; A. D. Grambling to Stephen Duncan, Aug. 10, 1873, Stephen Duncan Papers,Natchez TraceCollection (Eugene C. BarkerTexasHistory Center, Universityof Texas,Austin); Paul D. Escott, SlaveryRemembered (Chapel
Hill, 1979), 153-54; U.S. Congress,House of Representatives,Election of 1868, 41 Cong., 2 sess., House misc. doc.
154, pp. 181-82.

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Rights and Black Life in War and Reconstruction

879

sfeY~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
......

wtb

"TheFirstVote."The threemen votingexemplifykeyelementsof blackpolitical

leadership:the artisan(with tools in his pocket),the urbanite,and the soldier.
November16, 1867.
fromHarper'sWe~ekly,
Reproduced

aerthern
and divisionsamongsouthernRepublicans)
Republicans
preventeddirect
action
on the landissueexceptin SouthCarolina,blacklegislatorssuccessfully
advocated
to plantationlaborers.Their
croplien, tax,and othermeasuresadvantageous
success
markeda remarkabledeparturefrom the daysof slaveryand Presidential
whenpublicauthoritywasgearedto upholdingthe interestsof the
Reconstruction,
class.On the localandstatelevels,blackofficialsalsopressedfor the expanplanter
sionof suchpublic institutionsas schools,hospitals,and asylums.Theyinsisted,
that the newly expanded state must be color-blind, demanding and often
moreover,

lawsprohibitingracialdiscriminationin public transportation

and acachieving
ummodations
and, althoughgenerallyamenableto separateschoolsfor blackand
white,
insistingthat suchsegregationbe a matterof choice,ratherthan being readvancedproposalsto expand
quired
by law.Blacklawmakersalso unsuccessfully
even
further
to
include
pub~ic
responsibility
regulationof privatemarketsandinsuraicecompanies,
on the saleof liquor,andevenprohibitionof fairs,gainrestrictions
Win,andhorseracingon Sundays.In thosewaysandmore,theyrevealeda visionl

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

of a democratic state actively promoting the social and moral well-being of its
citizens.34
Ultimately, however,blacksviewed the national governmentas the guarantorof
their rights. Before 1860 blacks and their white allies had generally feared federal
power,since the governmentat Washington seemed under the control of the "Slave
Power,"and after 1850 they looked to state authoritiesto nullify the federal Fugitive
SlaveAct. But blackswho had come to freedom through an unprecedented exercise
of national power and who then had seen whites restored to local hegemony by
PresidentJohnsonattempt to make a mockeryof that freedom became increasingly
hostile to ideas of states' rights and local autonomy. Until Americans abandoned
the idea of "the right of each State to control its own affairs. .. ," wrote Frederick
Douglass, "no generalassertionof human rights can be of any practicalvalue."Black
political leaders did not share fears of "centralism"common even in Republican
circles, and throughout Reconstructionthey supported proposals for such vast expansions of federal authorityas Alabama black congressmanJames T. Rapier'splan
for a national educational system complete with federally mandated textbooks.35
As Reconstructionprogressed,the national Constitution took its place alongside
the Declaration of Independence as a central referencepoint in black political discourse.A petition of Louisianablackscalling for the removalof hostile local officials
began with these familiarwords:"Wethe people of Louisianain order to establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility,promote the general welfare ... do ordain and
establish this Constitution."Likemany RadicalRepublicans, black political leaders
found in the Constitution'sclause guaranteeing to each state a "republicanform
of government"a reservoirof federal power over the states-the "most pregnant
clause"of the Constitution, CongressmanRobertB. Elliott of South Carolinacalled
it. But blacksparticularlyidentified the postwaramendments as definitions of a new
national citizenship and as guaranteesof federal authority to protect the rights of
individual citizens. The political crisisof 1866-which black complaints against the
injustices of Presidential Reconstructionhad helped create-had produced the
Fourteenth Amendment, defining for the first time a national citizenship with
rights no state could abridge, embracing blacks and whites equally. As a result,
MartinR. Delany reportedfrom South Carolina,blacks believed "the Constitution
had been purged of color by a RadicalCongress."Indeed, blackscalled for even more
far-reachingconstitutional changes than northern Republicanswere willing to accept. Black spokesmen, for instance, supported a Fifteenth Amendment that explicitly guaranteedall male citizens above the age of twenty-one the right to vote wording far more sweeping than the language actually adopted, which allowed
states to restrictthe suffragefor any reasonexcept that of race.Not for the firsttime,

34 Fonerand Lewis,eds., Black Worker,

II, 149;EricFoner,Nothing but Freedom:Emancipationand Its Legac)
(Baton Rouge, 1983), 39-73; HowardN. Rabinowitz, ed., Southern Black Leadersof the ReconstructionEra (Ur.
bana, 1982), 211, 257-58; CharlesVincent, Black Legislatorsin Louisiana during Reconstruction(Baton Rouge
1976), 180, 199; Edmund L. Drago, Black Politicians and Reconstructionin Georgia (Baton Rouge, 1983), 89.
35 Foner, ed., Life and Writingsof FrederickDouglass, IV, 199; Foner and Lewis, eds., Black Worker,I, 136

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

881

blacks'definition of equal citizenship provedto be more expansivethan that of most

white Americans.36
But more than any other issue, racialviolence led blacksto identify the federal
governmentas the ultimate guarantorof their rights. Increasingly,it became clear
that local and state authorities, even those elected by blacks, were either unwilling
or unable to put down the Ku Klux Klan and kindred organizations."Weare more
slave today in the hand of the wicked than we were before,"read a desperateplea
from Alabama freedmen. "We need protection . . . only a standing army in this
place can give us our right and life.""Dearsir,"read a letter written during Mississippi's violent Redemption campaign of 1875, "did not the 14th Article . . . say
that no person shall be deprived of life nor property without due process of law?
It said all personshave equal protection of the laws but I say we colored men don't
get it at all.... Is that right, or is it not? No, sir, it is wrong."Blacksenthusiastically
supported the EnforcementActs of 1870 and 1871,which effectivelyput an end to
the Klan, and the Reconstructionera expansion of the powersof the federal judiciary.One blackconventionwent so faras to insist that virtuallyall civil and criminal
cases involving blacks be removablefrom state to federal courts, a mind-boggling
enhancement of federal judicial authority.37
Throughout Reconstruction,blacks insisted that "those who freed them shall
protect that freedom."Increasingly,however,blacks'expansivedefinition of federal
authorityput them at odds with mainstreamwhite Republicans,who by the 1870s
were retreatingfrom the war-inspiredvision of a powerful national state. Indeed,
even among abolitionists, the persistent demands of blacks for federal action on
their behalf raisedfearsthat the freedmen weresomehow not acting as autonomous
citizens capable of defending their own interests. FrederickDouglass himself had
concluded in 1865 that the persistentquestion "Whatshall we do with the Negro?"
had only one answer:"Do nothing. . . . Give him a chance to stand on his own
legs! Let him alone!"Douglass realized that the other face of benevolence is often
paternalism and that in a society resting, if only rhetorically,on the principle of
equality, "specialefforts"on the freedmen'sbehalf might "serveto keep up the very
prejudices,which it is so desirable to banish."It was precisely that image to which
PresidentJohnson had appealed in justifying his vetoes of the Freedmen'sBureau
and Civil Rights bills in 1866. Douglass, of course, and most Republicans,believed
equal civil rights and the vote were essential to enabling blacks to protect themselves. But by the 1870s, with those rights granted, blacks'demands for protection

36 A. R. Henderson to RichardH. Cain, April 13, 1875, William P. Kellogg Papers(LouisianaState University,
Baton Rouge); CongressionalGlobe, 42 Cong., 1 sess., April 1, 1871, p. 389; New National Era, Aug. 31, 1871;
William D. Fortento CharlesSumner,Feb. 1, 1869, CharlesSumnerPapers(Houghton Library,HarvardUniversity,
Cambridge, Mass.).
37 James Martin and five others to William H. Smith, May 25, 1869, Alabama Governor'sPapers(Alabama
State Department of Archivesand History);William Crelyto Adelbert Ames, Oct. 9, 1875, MississippiGovernor's
Papers;Report and Testimonyof the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causesof
the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States, pt. 2, p. 395.

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TheJournalof AmericanHistory

882

struckmany whites, including reformers,as reflectinga desire to become privileged

"wards of the nation."38

The fate of CharlesSumner'sfederalCivil RightsBill, prohibiting racialdiscrimination in public accommodations, transportation, schools, churches, and
cemeteries, illustrated how much black and white Republicansdiffered regarding
what obligations the federal governmenthad incurredby emancipating the slaves.
Beforegalleriescrowdedwith blackspectators,blackcongressmeninvokedboth the
personalexperienceof having been evicted from inns, hotels, and railroadsand the
black political ideology that had matured during Reconstruction.ToJames T Rapier, discriminationwas "anti-republican,"
recallingthe classand religiousinequalities of other lands- in Europe"theyhaveprinces, dukes, lords";in India "brahmans
or priests,who rankabove the sudrasor laborers";in the United States "ourdistinction is color."RichardH. Cain reminded the House that "the black man's labor"
had enriched the country;Robert B. Elliott recalled the sacrificesof black soldiers.
But white Republicansconsideredthe bill an embarrassmentto the party.Not until
1875 did a watered-downversionpass Congress. It contained only weak provisions
for enforcement and remained largelya dead letter until the Supreme Court ruled
it unconstitutional in 1883.39
In the end, the broad conception of "rights"with which blacks attempted to
imbue the social revolution of emancipation proved tragicallyinsecure. Although
some of the autonomy blacks had wrested for themselves in the early days of
freedom was irreversible(control of their religious life, for example), the dream of
economic independence had been dashed even before the end of Reconstruction.
By the end of the century, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments had been
effectivelynullified in the South. As Supreme CourtJustice John MarshallHarlan
put in 1883, the United States entered on "an era of constitutional law when the
rights of freedom and American citizenship cannot receive from the nation that
efficientprotectionwhich heretoforewas unhesitatinglyaccordedto slaveryand the
rights of the master."During Reconstruction,political involvement, economic selfhelp, and family and institution building had all formed parts of a coherent
ideology of black community advancement. After the South's "Redemption,"that
ideology separatedinto its component parts, and blacks'conception of their "rights"
turned inward.Assuming a defensiveposture, blacksconcentratedon strengthening
their community and survivingin the face of a patently unjust political and social
order, rather than directly challenging the new status quo.

38 ChristianRecorder,May 26, 1866; Foner,

ed., Life and Writingsof FrederickDouglass, III, 189;James D.
Richardson,ed., A Compilation of the Messagesand Papersof the Presidents 1789-1897 (10 vols., Washington,
1896-1899), VI, 399-413; National Anti-Slavery Standard, Feb. 5, 1870.
39 Alfred H. Kelly, "The CongressionalControversyover School Segregation, 1867-1875, AmericanHistorical
Review, 64 (April 1959), 552; CongressionalRecord, 43 Cong., 1 sess., Dec. 19, 1873, p. 344; ibid., Jan. 5, 1874,
p. 382; ibid., Jan. 6, 1874, pp. 407-9; ibid., Jan. 10, 1874, p. 565; ibid., Jan. 24, 1874, pp. 901-2; ibid., June
9, 1874, pp. 4782, 4785; ibid., 2 sess., Feb. 3, 1875, p. 945; BertramWyatt-Brown,"The Civil Rights Act of 1875,"
WesternPolitical Quarterly, 18 (Dec. 1965), 763-65; John Hope Franklin,"The Enforcementof the Civil Rights
Act of 1875,"Prologue, 6 (Winter 1974), 225-35.

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Rightsand BlackLifein Warand Reconstruction

883

A disasterfor blacks,the collapseof Reconstructionwasalso a tragedythat deeply

affected the future development of the nation as a whole. If racism contributed to
the undoing of Reconstruction,by the same token Reconstruction'sdemise and the
emergenceof blacksas a disfranchisedclassof dependent laborersgreatlyfacilitated
racism'sfurther spread, so that by the earlytwentieth century it had become more
deeply embedded in the.nations' culture and politics than at any time since the beginning of the antislaverycrusade. Meanwhile, the activist state's associationwith
the aspirationsof blacks discredited it in the eyes of many white Americans. And
the removal of a significant portion of the laboring population from public life
shifted the centerof gravityof Americanpolitics to the right, complicatingthe tasks
of reformersfor generations to come. Long into the twentieth century, the South
remained a one-party region under the control of a reactionaryruling elite whose
national power weakened the prospectsnot simply of change in racialmatters but
of progressivelegislation in many other realms.40
In this year of the United States Constitution's bicentennial, it is sobering to
reflect how frail the constitutional recognition of blacks'citizenship rights proved
as a guarantee of racial equality among American citizens. Well might blacks bitterly echo the wordsof ReconstructioncongressmanJosephRainey:"tell me nothing
of a constitution which fails to shelter beneath its rightful power the people of a
country."41

40 Konvitz, Centuryof Civil Rights, 118. On the effectsof the failure of Reconstruction,see Eric Foner,Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), chs. 12 and 13.
41 CongressionalGlobe, 42 Cong., 1 sess., March 27, 1871, p. 294-95.

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